Now is the Time for Action!

 Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. People who grew up, as I did, in an age of typewriters (google a video if you need to), will remember that phrase as the most common practice sentence for ‘touch typing.’ Of course, an updated version would replace ‘men’ with ‘people’.

There are many ways we can step up to make a difference between now and the next election, and I encourage you not to limit yourself to the easiest ones. I will mention a few that come to mind, most of which I have done in the past, recently, or will do my best to dedicate some time to. As I come out of a near depression following Trump’s election in November exacerbated by the sheer incompetence and overreach of his governing. which are resulting in quickly sinking public approval, I have remembered how good it can make me feel to take action. Here are some of the ways you can make a difference.

Talk to friends, neighbors, co-workers, fellow members of churches, clubs, or the guy sitting next to you at the bar. Ask them how they’re feeling about the first months of Trump’s second term. If they think everything is great, don’t argue. If they have doubts, draw them out, be sympathetic. You don’t have to try to persuade them—it can take several interactions before they are ready to acknowledge what you see as obvious truth and facts.

Contact our Republican representatives in Congress. It’s easy to think they won’t follow our pleas for them to oppose harmful legislation or hold the administration accountable, but if enough of us do this often enough, they will begin to understand that they may face difficulties in the next election if they ignore their constituents. There’s a great app available, “5 Calls,”  that makes it easy, and I try to call every day. It just takes a few minutes and the app provides suggested points to make on various issues. Make sure to identify yourself as a constituent. If you’re Republican and/or voted for Trump, mention that!

Do you have more money than time? There are many ways to donate to make a difference, and if you’re like me and have made some donations you are probably on every candidate and non-profit’s mailing list now. It can be a real turn off. For orgs that my wife and I know are doing great work, we budget an annual donation and then refuse all requests for additional. Currently, I think that the courts are the most effective arena for stopping the worst actions of the Trump administration, so I am donating to a few organizations that are bringing lawsuits to stop the harm like ACLU, Democracy Forward, and State Democracy Defenders Action.

There are many advocacy organizations in West Virginia working on issues that may be  important to you. Volunteering for them (and/or donating) can end up impacting elections in our state because these organizations notify supporters about which candidates are best on their issues, sometimes buying ads and knocking on doors. 

Many of the Republican supermajority in the legislature have  modeled themselves after Donald Trump. They are ignoring norms and attacking or revoking support for programs and government agencies that provide essential services while rewarding their rich donors including corporations with tax cuts and other favors. Consider donating or volunteering for WV Citizens Action (for 50 years fighting for rights, public policy, democracy and the environment in WV), WV Rivers Coalition (protecting our land and waters), West Virginians for Affordable Health Care, Together for Public Schools WV (project of WV Center for Budget and Policy), Moms Demand Action WV (gun safety), WV Free (reproductive health and more), Fairness WV (LGBTQ+ protection), WV Black Voter Impact Initiative to name a few.

Don’t wait until a month before the 2026 election to consider volunteering to make calls, send texts, knock on doors, or help out a candidate or county party effort. It takes time to establish trust with voters suspicious of government who think “they’re all corrupt.” In WV we are small enough to get to know the candidates personally, and if you do, you can tell people what you know about the ones you support. Of course, if you’re passionate enough, consider running!

Finally, while protesting may not be your thing, when large numbers of people make their dissatisfaction known in public, it can become a big news story that brings others out who may otherwise be fearful of making their opinions known. A feeling of being part of a peaceful movement is a powerful force for change.

We are not likely to change our deep red state significantly in one election cycle. But if we make some gains, we can start a change that builds over time. Now is the time for all of us to come to the aid of our country! 

Paul Epstein is a retired teacher and musician living in Charleston

Rural White Appalachians Feel Victimized, We Should Listen

    I recently wrote an op-ed (Charleston Gazette-Mail, 2/15/23 "Is it Woke Just to be a Decent Person?") explaining and debunking the negative attacks by extremist Republicans on what they call “woke” (the English teacher in me wants to correct that to wokeness). They apply this taunt to anyone who holds ideas different from theirs, especially those held by Democrats, liberals, progressives. Beliefs such as that democracy is important; that our Constitution protects us from being subject to the religious rules and practices that may not agree with our own; that American history is not simply a story of rugged individualists conquering a wilderness and building a modern nation, but that our history contains many shameful chapters in which the majority white settlers oppressed, murdered, and stole from the indigenous people, they enslaved people they imported from Africa and the Caribbean and any immigrants whose skin was not as light as most northern Europeans. Republicans want laws that protect them from having to treat people equally whose sexual identity does not match the two genders recognized in the Christian Bible, ban books, teachers, and ideas that might cause their children to question the narrative of American greatness in all things at all times or cause them discomfort as they grapple with difficult issues encountered in factual history.

Remember Hillary Clinton’s comment that there were different “baskets” of Republicans, most of whom were reasonable and could be worked with, but a minority of whom belonged in the “basket of deplorables?” Remember Obama’s observation to a group of educated urbanites that when some working class folks lose the industries that had supported their communities for generations, sometimes “they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations?”

Clinton and Obama weren’t wrong.  Who could argue that some of those who stormed the U.S. Capitol or those who marched with Tiki torches in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us,” weren’t acting deplorably? While I believe one shouldn’t label a person deplorable, suggesting they can’t change, aren’t many rural white Americans angry, going to churches or seeking news sources that tell them criminals and rapists are flooding over the borders to change our way of life? Aren’t some even considering using their guns to start a revolution?

But I want to argue that we are not going to change minds by writing people off as crazy, stupid, uneducated, or un-American. Despite our facts, statistics, and logic, many every day West Virginians feel as if they are victimized by life in America—and they are not wrong.

West Virginians endure jokes and even discrimination because they use the language they grew up with, a dialect that includes words like ain’t, usages like “he don’t,” accents that make it hard to distinguish pin from pen or make flower sound like “flar.” Their pride in independence: the ability to eke out sustenance from a rocky and mountainous region causes them to be subjected to stereotypes that they walk around with rifles, barefoot, carrying a jug of moonshine. Of course some do—and celebrate that, and will invite you to join them hunting or drinking. Many people believe Trump wasn’t entirely wrong when he said, “there were very fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville. We’ve had presidents, writers of the Constitution who it’s hard not to call “very fine people,” but they owned other people, profited off their labor, while being civil and polite to others. Among the January 6 rioters were people who truly believed they were protesting a stolen election. We should never define people in black and white, though their actions can be defined. As to their character, there are always shades of grey. 

My message today is simply this, we can’t write off our neighbors as beyond redemption. They may believe things that we know are untrue, they may fit Appalachian stereotypes: suspicious of outsiders, believers in strict religions that promise hellfire in the hereafter for anyone who touches demon alcohol or strays from moral strictures regarding gender and sexuality.  They may speak and write in what appear to be illiterate ways, and they may express hatred for people who do not look like them, who they actually may fear. Nevertheless, they can be decent people who would “give you the shirt off your back,” tow your car out of a ditch, give you a basket of fresh vegetables. 

Perhaps we can change their minds, but not unless we start from a place of respect. They may be extremists and may be fast asleep to the changes we see in the culture of the United States and the world, but we can begin to wake them up only if we rise above our prejudices.

Paul Epstein is a retired teacher and musician living in Charleston, WV

Wake Up, West Virginia

 

Wake up, West Virginia. If Florida is “where woke goes to die,” as their governor Ron DeSantis crows, then we need to understand what it means for West Virginia. For far right political propaganda warriors, “woke” is an all encompassing term for everything they believe is wrong with being liberal or progressive in one’s thinking.

The term “woke” started among young people on college campuses to describe the awareness they felt for the problems of our society that they were concerned with and studying. Those who denied that racism was a continuing problem in our institutions, that LGBTQ+ people needed protections against discrimination, that misogyny and sexual assault were not solved by laws, that climate change was an existential problem, and that there was a relationship, or intersectionality, that connected these problems, well, that person was not awake to the problems many vulnerable minorities face. In short, being aware, practicing empathy, is being “woke.”

Many social conservatives, on the other hand, proudly deny these problems and see possible solutions as problems. They claim it’s a problem to acknowledge that racism still exists in America and even sometimes go so far as to say it is the white majority that is suffering from discrimination. They claim that allowing same sex marriage somehow degrades the institution of marriage between heterosexuals and that someone who views themself as “trans,” or a different gender than they appear to be (or were “assigned at birth” which medically speaking is not always clear), is not entitled to the same rights as people they view as normal. They resent being asked to be respectful by asking or using a person’s preferred pronouns. They view the right to burn fossil fuels as a God given right despite trillions of dollars in disasters caused or made worse by climate change. They deny people the right of bodily autonomy in matters of pregnancy. And they demand that children should be shielded from learning anything about these issues in school, even if they come from families where it is their lived experience.

What does it mean to not be “woke?” Above, I identified social conservatives who deny these issues. Some are like ostriches with their heads in the ground, seeking to ignore a changing world. Some are angry that the world they were taught about in church or home is not the one they now confront. They want to turn back the clock. To not be woke, I believe, is to be either ignorant or in denial. As a white, heterosexual male, I cannot speak for my fellow humans who are directly affected by the daily barrage of insult or even vitriol coming from people ignorant or in denial. Growing up Jewish in a Christian community, I sometimes encountered small scale anti-semitism from acquaintances. Once I was asked for a quarter by a boy, who, after I gave it to him, turned to his friend and said, “See, he’s not a Jew.” I didn’t try to wake him up to the reality that I was, in fact, a Jew.

Being “woke” does not have to be something to fear or criticize or legislate against. C’mon West Virginia, wake up—it’s just being decent.

WV Legislature Made Progress Destroying Public Education in 2022

Teachers in 2018: It may be time to walk out again. Certainly must VOTE!

Teachers (and anyone who cares about public education in WV), listen up! In one case, four minutes was all that stood between you this legislative session and the unreasonable demands of Republican lawmakers. I’m talking about their so-called “Anti-Racism Act” (SB 498–it passed, but too late to become law). But they managed to pass at least two other disturbing education bills or resolutions. SB 704, which passed and is headed to the governor for signing, requires teachers to make all course materials available by the first day of class for parents/guardians to preview. They can demand that you “demonstrate how the supplementary instructional material relates to the content standards...” If you fail to do so in a manner that satisfies, they can file a complaint to your Superintendent, which, if not “resolved,” goes to the state Superintendent. You could get in trouble, for example if you introduced something from a current newspaper that hadn’t been made available for parents to preview by the first day of class! So current events are now not acceptable? What about the internet?

The “Anti-Racism Act” claimed to prevent teachers/schools from requiring students or employees to “state or believe in the superiority of one race or biological sex over another.” It states students/employees can’t be obligated to feel guilt or in any way responsible for what a member of their race or biological sex did in the past. But, for example, if you introduced the fact that white plantation owners enslaved blacks and sometimes beat or lynched them, and a child goes home and says their teacher made them feel “discomfort” or guilt, that parent can file a complaint against you with your principal that can end up on the Superintendent’s desk.

How should a teacher respond if a student or a colleague said, “If poor people of color just worked harder, they would be equal economically and socially to other (white) Americans?” I would want to point out that many are already working 2 and 3 jobs and that bias or discrimination may prevent advancement in some cases. But the Anti-Racism bill would have made it illegal for you to explain that the concepts of “meritocracy” or “a hard work ethic” are sometimes, to paraphrase the bill’s language, used by racists and sexists to deny that discrimination oppresses another group. Confused yet? If I were still teaching, I’d be afraid to even bring up or respond to a student on the topic of racism or sexism. I guess that’s the point.

It should not need to be stated that not every person of color is or was disadvantaged by discriminatory systems that existed and may still exist: slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, immigration laws, bank loan and credit policy, unfair policiing, etc. It also goes without saying that not every white person was or is directly advantaged by those systems. But most white Americans, even in West Virginia, had or have access to better schools, nicer neighborhoods, higher paying jobs, the ability to elect those in government who would improve their roads, etc. Of course those advantages shouldn’t leave children with any sense of guilt and doesn’t make them responsible for the problems such inequities have created in our society. That’s common sense–something sorely lacking in the minds of many at the Capitol.

Incompetence saved teachers this time. SB 498, the “Anti-Racism Act” was passed four minutes after midnight on the last night of the session, so it will not become law….yet.

But do you think they’ll stop trying to make it or something like it law?

WV Republicans also passed a Constitutional amendment for the November ballot that would take control of school curriculum and policies out of the hands of professionals and citizen boards. “Decisions affecting daily classroom life would be placed in the hands of a partisan Legislature,” the WV Board of Education declared in a letter opposing the Constitutional amendment.

Teachers and school staff, supported by the public, stood 55 counties strong in unity for affordable health care and better pay for all public employees in 2018. Now all West Virginians need to stand strong and vote out the legislators responsible for bad legislation this session.

Help organize voters to vote down the Constitutional amendment that gives the legislature final authority for all public education policies and curriculum while letting homeschools and “learning pods” of unlimited size free to ignore all state board educational policies and curriculum.

Teachers and service personnel, if you haven’t joined WVEA, AFT-WV, or WVSSPA it’s time to do so, because you will need the protection of professional organizations. They can represent you in hearings and investigations if angry, close minded parents influenced by right wing media make unfounded complaints. You should be allowed to teach in a way that will inspire students to work for a more equitable and fair West Virginia. If you are forced to avoid tough subjects and good teachers continue leaving the profession, young people will continue moving out of state to live in places where all people are treated with respect under the law.

Paul Epstein is a retired elementary school teacher and musician living in Charleston

Let Teachers Teach History (not propaganda)

As some members of our legislature introduce legislation to prevent WV teachers from honestly teaching American history because they worry it is “divisive” or that white students will be ashamed of the facts of our American history, it’s worth reviewing what those facts are.

Imagine a world in which Christopher Columbus discovered America and the Europeans who followed were welcomed by Native Americans who, fed them, sold them land, and in a few rare instances fought against Europe’s and later America’s eventual colonization of the continent, generally living peacefully together with help from missionaries to learn agriculture and give up their former life of struggle to survive in a vast wilderness. 

Imagine the Africans were brought to America in a mercantile exchange by brave and heroic sea captains outfitted by wealthy traders on multiple continents leading the United States to grow powerful on sea and land. Sugar from Caribbean plantations was shipped to New England where rum was made and shipped to Africa to trade for Africans who were enslaved to produce cotton. Imagine those Africans were happy in the New World, fed and housed by kindly white plantation owners and loved like members of the family. They were encouraged to attend church every Sunday to learn about God’s plan and intention—for the superior white race to use the wealth that was being created to build cities, transportation networks, and new technologies to achieve their “Manifest Destiny” of domination over North America.

Sadly, this is the “history” of the United States that was taught with few exceptions through the 1960’s and in some areas and some schools is still taught today. It is the whitewashed version of history that mobs of angry parents are demanding to have back in their schools.  Parents who are afraid their children can’t handle the truth and will feel distressed if they realize that their ancestors enslaved others and built the wealth and privilege they now enjoy over centuries. These parents are encouraged and sometimes funded and led by right wing dark money PACS and think tanks. They are trying to make schools into political hot button issues to affect upcoming elections using false claims that “critical race theory,” a theory studied by university scholars, is being used in public K-12 schools to shame white children. Oh, and that wearing masks or requiring vaccinations is impinging on their freedom to die of a deadly disease or be allowed to freely spread it.

Time for a little fact checking. Most Native Americans tried to get along with European colonists and wanted to trade with them, but the history of their treatment by the English, Spanish, and Americans is one of brutality, having their lands encroached upon and stolen, constant breaking of treaties, spread of deadly diseases, and efforts to simply wipe them out resulting in the death of as much as 90% of the indigenous population in a couple hundred years.

Captured and enslaved Africans were cruelly separated from their homelands, tribes and families and literally sold to the highest bidder and often worked to death and punished with beatings, whippings, or lynched if they dared to attempt escape or openly resist. Our Constitution protected the enslavement of black human beings and granted political power to southern states where their so-called human property could be counted as 3/5ths of a person to give them more seats in Congress and protect the “peculiar institution” of slavery, as it was known. 

In the imaginary history of our right wing fellow citizens, any residual effects of slavery on the lives of African Americans that lingered after the Civil War were magically completely dispelled by the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts in the 1960’s. Of course that’s a fantasy, and there are countless examples from around the country of discrimination remaining in place in schools, workplaces, and housing; not to mention acts of violence including lynching by white citizens against blacks. Discrimination, brutality and even murder of blacks by police are well documented right into the present.

I did my best in elementary school classrooms in Clendenin and Charleston from 1987-2012 to help students reckon with the truth of our history while also exposing them to the many aspects of America that rightfully fill us with pride. In my experience, it was not the white students who were most affected emotionally by learning about some of the darker periods of our history—generally they wanted to know why inequality continues into the present day and what could be done to solve it. It was the black students who were the most affected, as some for the first time learned how badly their ancestors were treated and wondered why even today, as they no doubt heard from their families or witnessed themselves, they continue to face discrimination because of the color of their skin.

This IS Who We Are (at least some of us)

 

 

Fellow West Virginians, we have come through four years of a presidency that forced us to take positions that starkly shine light on differences in our beliefs, derived from sets of so-called facts that describe our world in starkly different ways and lead us to see it, each other, and the possibilities for what lies ahead in profoundly different ways. 

High falutin’ language? I must be a Yankee, or a college man, maybe even a lawyer or a Jew. Guilty on 3 counts. Born and raised in Pennsylvania, but I lived in WV—on 17 acres in Roane County— for 18 years until 1992, and in Charleston since then. Despite the fact that I’ve lived here longer than most born and raised here, I am not considered a West Virginian by many. As to Jewishness, yes, by birth, though I do not practice any religion, preferring to live my life following what I consider basic human morality: honesty, helpfulness, loving and forgiving as much as possible.

I attended WVSU (College, then) and Marshall University (COGS, then) as a young working parent, completing undergraduate and graduate degrees in elementary education. I taught at Clendenin Elementary school for 7 years and Ruffner Elementary in Charleston for 18 years. I was a founding member and first president of FOOTMAD, the Friends of Old Time Music and Dance, and have played traditional WV string band music and other styles in bands all over the East and Midwest, and many years ago in Greece and Turkey on a U.S.O. tour where I remember meeting a young soldier on an island off the coast of Greece at a satellite communications site who grew up a couple miles from where my wife and I were raising a baby and growing vegetables. 

When we meet on the street, we say howdy, talk about the weather, our families, our health, and the state of the roads. But if we veer into politics or the news, it’s not long before our conversation may become suspicious or angry. Each person makes statements about the facts that they believe and the sources where they get them. The facts don’t agree, and my sources, which are usually called the “mainstream media,” are called fake news by the other, while his or her sources are usually a website, a friend, neighbor, or family neighbor they know, or one of a few cable news networks they trust.

That is the end of the conversation for me. At that point, I say, “It’s been great seeing you and I’m glad you told me what you think, but if we can’t agree on what sources can provide trusted facts, then there’s really no way we can have a productive discussion.”

I have learned this lesson online. I often post what I consider articles from trusted sources to counter what I consider falsehoods or articles that make unlikely or wrong conclusions based on known facts. I do that even though I know I won’t change the mind of people making false claims. I hope someone who isn’t so steeped in alt-beliefs will be exposed to another view.

Senator Shelley Moore Capito, among others including Joe Biden, has described the 1/6/21 attack on the Capitol as “not who we are.” While I’m glad Capito is willing to call out violence against the Capitol where she was briefly in danger, that IS who some of us are. Despite our mostly white, rural demographic, West Virginians include a multitude of kinds of people who believe in multiple things. I think that Shelley would agree that many, if not all, of those who entered the Capitol acted deplorably. Many wore or carried symbols associating them with far right groups, including Proud Boys, KKK, Nazis, the Confederacy. The group included racists, women haters, terrorists, and people who want to destroy United States government and remake it in their own image. Only a few West Virginians may behave that deplorably, though we elected a state representative who was among them and a president who incited them.

So it’s time to acknowledge who we are and talk about who we want us to be. How can we educate, or “deprogram” or change minds of those who have deplorable beliefs if we just tell people they are not us—they are “Other?” Accepting who they are does not mean we don’t ask them to change. When an evangelical Christian meets a non believer who they believe will go to hell, they presumably don’t call for them to be locked up or banished. They invite them in, offer food, companionship, love, and song, hoping to persuade them their way is better. They acknowledge they’re not perfect, “We are all sinners,” they say. Well, maybe it’s time to take a page from them.

In West Virginia, almost 70% voted for Donald Trump this year. Who are they? They are us.

But they have been told by media they consume and their political leadership, repeated by friends and family, many of the following lies:

Liberal and Progressive Democrats are Socialists or Communists 

Most Democrats accept some ideas that Socialists have, such as government sponsored health care, Democrats don’t want government to take over factories and ban private ownership.

Liberal and Progressive Democrats want to defund the police.

 Few Democrats use this phrase. Most who do mean that they believe police are expected to solve too many problems they’re not suited for, like mental health problems and homelessness—programs that need better funding, and some of the funding could come from police departments relieved of those burdens.

Liberal and Progressive Democrats want to take away our guns 

Many Democrats support laws to improve gun safety such as requiring background checks, doing away with loopholes, banning large clips and/or assault weapons only useful for killing people.

Liberal and Progressive Democrats want to take away our health care or force us to use government health care 

Millions of people have gained insurance and affordable health care under Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and the Affordable Care Act-Obamacare. Republicans have fought these programs and tried to destroy them. Their philosophy is that people are responsible for their own health, and should spend their own money on their health when they get sick.

Liberal and Progressive Democrats are anti-coal. 

Democrats believe that all workers deserve safe working environments and pay that can support a family. They support coal miners in forming unions to fight for safety and good pay. Coal companies must be held liable for the damage that coal mining and coal burning do to our environment. If Coal companies cannot produce and use coal safely and cleanly compared to other forms of energy, they will go out of business. We must insist they pay to clean up their messes. We must help workers losing jobs in coal industries to learn and find good paying jobs to replace those lost to cleaner, more affordable energy.

Liberal and Progressive Democrats kill babies. They are pro-abortion

Almost no one is "pro-abortion". Democrats acknowledge that not every pregnancy is viable, safe, or healthy. Many pregnancies result in unavoidable miscarriages, which is often painful and disappointing to the woman, and perhaps her partner. Some pregnancies must be forced to be miscarried--aborted--to protect the life or health of the woman. Some pregnancies, especially those caused by rape or incest, or perpetrated on underage girls as young as nine or ten are dangerous to the mental state of women forced to carry a fetus to term. A "pro-life" position should consider these issues and "pro-choice" proponents believe women should make these decisions in consultation with their doctor. 

Liberal and Progressive Democrats are evil pedophiles: 

The Q-anon conspiracy is a dangerous fantasy. People sometimes believe literally any whacky idea made up and promoted on the Internet. Like an addiction to drugs, sex, gambling, or membership in gangs, militias, or cults, belief in conspiracy theories like this give people a high and creates a community that supports each other’s ideas. 

I’m doing the easy work of defining problems. We need people to solve problems. Howard Swint (who contributes op-eds to the WV Gazette-Mail), recently reached out to me to suggest we form a diverse group of West Virginians to travel around talking to people who have not met many people different than themselves to talk and get to know one another. I told him that after I got my vaccination, I would consider doing that.

Apple or Bomb? Your Choice on November 8

It’s easier to compare apples to apples. One apple is green, crisp, tart; the other red, juicy, sweet. It’s harder to compare apples to oranges. But how do you compare an apple to a bomb? 

In this election, how will you compare a politician who has spent her career working to improve the lives of children and families with a wealthy businessman and reality TV star.

Donald Trump is a self-proclaimed multi-billionaire who grew his inheritance by making deals that he acknowledges have benefited him while often fleecing others. Trump University, being sued in three class action suits, is described as “a straight up fraud” by the Attorney General of NY. 

Trump refuses to release his tax returns, so we assume he is hiding something. Is it that he pays little or no income tax? Are many of his businesses supported by foreign investors with questionable integrity? Many have speculated that it is his business interests in Russia that drive his admiration for their authoritarian leader, Vladimir Putin. Newsweek recently reported after extensive research that “If Donald Trump wins this election and his company is not immediately shut down or forever severed from the Trump family, the foreign policy of the United States of America could well be for sale.”

Trump claims he “is the least racist person you will ever meet.” Yet he has consistently made racist statements about Latinos and Muslims, and his first foray into politics was based on the allegation that Barack Obama was not born in America, an accusation that African Americans correctly interpret as a racist effort to delegitimize the first African American President of the United States. He recently retracted it under pressure from his campaign managers who are trying to make him more palatable to mainstream voters. Avowed racists and white nationalists recognize him as one of their own, however, and have been enthusiastically endorsing and campaigning for him.

PolitiFact, a Pulitzer Prize winning fact checker, has rated 70% of his claims in this campaign as mostly false, false, or “pants on fire.”

It’s hard for the media to stop talking about Trump (hard for me, too!) because he’s so outrageous and skilled at bringing attention to himself. Just minutes after playing clips of Clinton referring to Trump and no clips about the policies that comprised the bulk of her speech, an MSNBC anchor asked, “Why doesn’t she talk more about policy?”

In the recent NBC National Security Town Hall, Clinton had to spend half her time explaining the complexities of her e-mails as Secretary of State, a controversy created by the wasteful House Republican investigation into Benghazi.  Added to endless Whitewater investigation against her and her husband in the nineties that ended up uncovering nothing except a man who lied about his infidelity, Republicans have succeeded in creating the perception that the Clintons are dishonest. If she were the liar her critics claim, somewhere in the eleven hours of Benghazi testimony or the hours of FBI grilling there would have been cause for a perjury claim.  PolitiFact has ranked 72% of her campaign claims as true, mostly true, or half true. Remember, Trump: 70% falsehoods. How do you like them apples?  

But let’s talk policy! There are many reasons to vote for Hillary Clinton besides saving the nation and the world from the turmoil of a Trump presidency. With eight years of steady leadership by President Obama, we have recovered from the Great Recession. We just learned 2015 median wages increased by a stunning 5%! Hillary Clinton plans to increase the job growth we have enjoyed the last 6 1/2 years through a variety of proposals, including increased spending on desperately needed infrastructure projects: roads, bridges, clean energy, high tech. She will work to raise the minimum wage, fight for equal pay and guaranteed family leave, child care and housing for those who need assistance. She will work to improve and expand the Affordable Care Act to cover more Americans and keep health care costs down. 

Unlike her opponent who makes up policies on the fly and makes false claims about the effects they will have on jobs and the economy, Hillary Clinton has devised her proposals over the last year with many top experts, including Bernie Sanders. Go to hillaryclinton.com/issues to read her proposals, including a highly detailed fact sheet outlining how she will invest billions revitalizing coal communities.

West Virginians are struggling. Democrats in our state government have not provided the leadership needed to move our economy forward in a declining coal market, so many have decided to give Republicans a try. Like their national counterparts, however, they spread divisiveness, attack worker’s rights, want tax cuts for the wealthy, and starve needed government programs. Historically, under Democratic presidents, the economy improves for working people and those on the margins more than under Republicans, whose policies favor the wealthy. That’s why I’m excited about a President Hillary Clinton. She may not be the “apple of your eye,” but she’s not the poisonous fruit some portray her to be, nor the time bomb that is the alternative.

Old-time Fiddler Found his Muse in West Virginia

The following story was written by Sandy Wells and appeared in the January 25, 2016 edition of the Charleston Gazette-Mail (links below)

In his Fort Hill home, champion fiddler Paul Epstein demonstrates the musical prowess 

that earned him a first place award in the senior division of the Glenville Folk Festival last year. 

A founder of FOOTMAD, he performs regularly with his contra dance band, the Contrarians

He hitchhiked around the country. He lived in a cabin in Maine. A quest for warmer weather lured him to West Virginia. A back-to-the-lander from Pennsylvania, he found his sweet space in Roane County.

He settled eventually in Charleston. He counseled troubled teens at Daymark. For 25 years, he taught school. For a decade or so, he worked with the West Virginia Writing Project. Now, he’s making a new label for himself as an environmental activist.

But nothing in Paul Epstein’s intriguing life defines him more than the music. Through it all, there was always the music.

In West Virginia, he discovered old-time mountain fiddlers and recognized his true calling. Something about the fiddle touched his soul. So he learned to play. Taught himself. Just like that.

With kindred old-time music fans in Roane County, he started the Booger Hole Revival, a band bent on bringing back mountain music.

In Charleston, he helped form FOOTMAD, an organization devoted to old-time music and dance. That spawned his current contra dance band, the Contrarians.

He retired from the 9-to-5 world three years ago. Now, music no longer plays second fiddle. At 63, still vibrant and involved, he finally can focus full-time on the instrument that captured his heart.

It’s paying off. He won first place last year in the state fiddling contest.

He believes his father, a violinist, would be proud.

“I grew up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, a city the size of Charleston in Lehigh Valley, about 60 miles from Philadelphia.

“My dad was a social worker, head of social services at Allentown State Hospital nearby. My mom raised four children, three boys and a girl. It was a good life. I excelled at school most of the time, though I was somewhat of a troublemaker at times, a typical boy.

“My father played violin in community orchestras. He loved classical music. I hated classical music. I grew up with popular music on the radio.

“I took piano lessons until I was a teenager and said no more. It didn’t fit my view of myself at the time. My older brother started playing a little guitar, so there was a guitar around and I learned a little of how to play. In my early 20s, I got my own guitar and started playing that.

“I dropped out of college and traveled the country hitchhiking with my girlfriend. It was 1969. The world was in turmoil. I was not excited to go to college. I went to a couple of big protest rallies. My hair was long. I guess I was a hippie for a few years.

“I had a few jobs to get money. I worked construction and drove a cab. I had a little money, like graduation gifts that my parents had saved for me, a couple thousand dollars that we lived on for a couple of years.

“My dad was pretty tolerant of all this. My mom was definitely fuming. I don’t regret it at all. Everyone grows up a different way, and I had to find my own way.

“It gave me more time to play music and learn more about music. I spent some time learning guitar and started playing in a band. I started on a stand-up bass in a band in Maine. They were playing bluegrass and some Irish music.

“I was hearing these melodies that I loved and I remembered them. I started picking out the notes on guitar.

“I got hold of a mandolin and started playing tunes on mandolin. Once I was in West Virginia and heard my first old-time fiddlers, the old guys playing at festivals, I had to start playing fiddle.

“We’d been living in Maine out in the woods. I built a little cabin there. We were looking for a warmer place. This was the early ’70s. I guess you could say we were back-to-the-landers. We landed in Roane County, a little place on a road leading to Green Creek beyond Frame.

“I settled in this empty building that had once been a church, just a wood frame 24-by-24 building. We lived there for a while. People referred to this as the Booger Hole Church. A booger hole back then was kind of a place of ill-repute. There apparently had been a moonshiner in the hollow and maybe some shootings, colorful stuff people could tell stories about.

A photo from the early 1980s shows fiddler 

Paul Epstein (left) with the Back Road
 Travelers, a successor to Booger Hole Revival, 

the band he helped organize in Roane County

“There were a lot of people there like myself there who had come from other places. We started a band called the Booger Hole Revival because we were reviving old-time music.

“I was playing fiddle. It’s the instrument to me that most defines old-time music, that and the banjo, but there was already another guy playing banjo. It was challenging. But the fiddle had all that energy.

“I never have taken a single lesson on guitar or fiddle. I just learned by ear and recording things and listening to records and tapes, just working on it.

“Booger Hole lasted six years, ’77 to ’83, when we changed our name to the Backwood Travelers. We didn’t have a lot of expenses in those days. We had been able to buy a piece of land. We raised a garden.

“We had the money that came in from playing in the band, and I would do odd jobs. I worked for a logger for a couple of years. In ’77, my daughter was born and I married the woman I traveled the country with.

“Then I started working for Daymark Inc., for Patchwork. I started taking college classes at West Virginia State and got into the teacher education program and continued with Daymark until about ’85 when I graduated.

“I had always said about social work that I wouldn’t want to do that. People said I was a natural at it. I grew up in a family of social workers, so I understood how to talk to people.

“I listened to these troubled teens and found out what their issues were and tried to help them set goals to do better. I enjoyed working with people, but you don’t get a lot back from troubled teenagers.

“I thought elementary education would be a good spot for me to get a job I could stick with. The burnout rate working with troubled teenagers is hard work. But so is teaching.

“I taught for 25 years, first in Clendenin, then I moved to Ruffner Elementary and moved into Charleston. I divorced.

“I helped start FOOTMAD (Friends of Old Time Music and Dance). I was the first president. A group of us got together and started having meetings about how we were going to put together a nonprofit organization to sponsor folk music.

“For a period, working full time and going to school full time, I didn’t do much with music. That didn’t last long. I started going to the FOOTMAD dances and joining the pickup band that gradually became a band to play for contra dances. We were called the Trusty House Band. FOOTMAD named us because we were always there for them. Then we became the Contrarians, our band now.

“In the early ’90s, I started writing a lot more songs. This was around the time I was getting divorced. I wrote a bunch of songs and did a CD of my own songs, ‘Lessons Life Taught Me,’ and I was playing as a singer-songwriter.

“The songs are folk-country, what they call Americana, a mix-up of country blues and whatever genre that would fit a song I was writing. I was also writing a lot of fiddle tunes and children’s songs.

“Before I did the CD of original songs, I did a cassette and then a CD of songs I had been writing for the kids at school. I called it ‘School Bus Comin’.’

“The Contrarians for the last 10 or 15 years have been playing once or twice a month. We started with out and backs, going out for a Saturday night dance in Columbus or Cleveland or Pittsburgh or Louisville or Lexington or Cincinnati. We are a pretty well-known band for contra dancing in the mid-Atlantic region.

“Sometimes we get hired for a dance weekend that will draw people from the region, maybe 200 people. They will hire two bands and two callers and there will be dancing all weekend.

“Last year I won first place in the senior division of the Glenville Folk Festival. I don’t consider myself much of a contest fiddler but in retirement, I decided to put a little more time into preparing for contests.

“As a teacher, I got involved with the National Writing Project. I took some workshops and classes from Fran Simone at the graduate college and eventually I ended up leading the local Central West Virginia Writing Project. I did that for about 10 years.

In 1996, Paul Epstein married Rita Ray, a name long 

associated with West Virginia Public Broadcasting. 

“I recently wrote a song called ‘Green Revolution’ about climate change. I have gotten more involved in environmental issues, especially after the chemical spill into the Elk River. I always supported environmental issues, but I never considered myself any kind of an activist. But I started writing more songs on that topic and wanted to share them with people who were activists.

“I went to many of the rallies and became involved in raising money for the West Virginia Environmental Council and actually formed a little project through CAG (Citizen Action Group) that I called AWARE (Artists Working in Alliance to Restore the Environment). I wanted to use it as a vehicle for getting other artists like myself to come together to help raise money for environmental issues in West Virginia. It hasn’t been wildly successful. We raised a few thousand dollars.

“It’s just another thing I’m interested in and will continue to do. As a retired person, I’m not looking for a full-time job or mission. I have my music, my environmental work and I continue to write songs and sometimes go out and perform them.

“It’s been a great life. I was glad to be able to retire when I turned 60. It gave me more time to focus on my music.

“I might not have had time or energy or desire to learn the music if I hadn’t had that period where I wasn’t driven to do anything else. If I had stayed in college and gone on the track that was set up for me in those days, I probably wouldn’t have had time to pursue those things.

“The things that didn’t go as well as I would have liked, I probably learned from. It made me who I am, and I like who I am. So I’m not going to waste time imagining what might have been.

“My dad died in 1996. I think he enjoyed the band and was proud of it. He was a very open-minded man. He loved music, and he loved his children. Even though I bewildered him sometimes, he allowed me to be who I chose to be.”

Reach Sandy Wells at sandyw@wvgazette.com or 304-342-5027.

- See more at: http://www.wvgazettemail.com/life/20160124/innerviews-old-time-fiddler-found-his-muse-in-west-virginia#sthash.DsfVHliP.dpuf

The End of Coal, the Restoration of WV

Retired TV News Correspondent, Ed Rabel, in an op-ed in the August 21 Gazette-Mail suggests that the southern West Virginia coalfields should be evacuated because strip mining, combined with drug use, other health issues and hopelessness in an economically starved region has made it dangerous to live there. I don’t dispute his view of the state of the region, just his proposed solution.

As a transplant who has probably lived here longer than most West Virginians who were born here, forty years, I can say without hesitation that we love our mountains and are tied to the land. Even those operating the heavy equipment that is destroying it love the mountains and streams and want to stay here. They just operate under the belief that mining coal regardless of the harm to the environment is what must be done to maintain their standard of living and our state’s economy. 

Ed Rabel imagined what he would do if he were king. What I would do is gather together politicians and religious leaders, educators and health professionals,  bankers and lawyers, scientists and captains of industry, and tell them that coal is history. We will leave the rest of the coal in the ground for some future when sun, wind, waves, geothermal, biomass, or other nonpolluting forms of energy can no longer provide energy. I would tell them it is up to all of us as a state and a nation to make the transition now: a national mobilization for clean energy. If we can send spacecraft to the ends of the solar system and reach the bottom of the ocean, if we can transplant hearts and lungs and create hip replacements and artificial lungs, cure cancers and create computers that can outthink a man, then we can create a clean energy future. 

On Saturday, September 12th at shelter #6 of Kanawha State Forest, 11 am to 3 pm, a group of people who love our mountains and streams will participate in a world-wide event called The Ground Beneath our Hearts organized to honor the creativity, dignity, and resilience of people who live in communities affected by mining and oil and gas development. This is a celebration, not a protest, and everyone who loves our state and wants to preserve it is invited to attend. For more information, go to ohvec.org/ground-beneath-our-hearts/

this essay was published in the Charleston Gazette-Mail on Saturday, August 29th, 2015 under the title, Innovate, Don't Evacuate Coalfields http://www.wvgazettemail.com/article/20150829/ARTICLE/150829494/1455

Carla Rising, A Novel Worth Reading

I just finished reading Carla Rising, by Topper Sherwood, available as a soft cover paperback only from WV Book Company click here (could be ordered by your local bookstore as well). Full disclosure: Topper and I worked together thirty some years ago and he has sent donations to a project I coordinate called AWARE: Artists Working in Alliance to Restore the Environment.

Carla Rising is a novel written by West Virginia native, Topper Sherwood, about the period in American history known as the West Virginia Mine Wars, specifically, the Battle of Blair of Mountain in 1921, during which thousands of armed miners attempted to march on the town of Logan to free their union brothers who had been jailed without charges. The battle ended only when the U.S. Army was sent in to restore order.  

Sherwood has fictionalized the event, renaming some places and not others, and assembling a cast of characters some of whom can be fairly easily correlated to the historical figures they stand in for. The book is named for a central character, Carla Rising Mandt, raised on Blair Mountain by parents, Bonner Rising, a miner who had died in an earlier labor battle, and her mother, Mary, a quintessentially strong Appalachian woman who quietly endures the hardships of an idyllic rural life trying, but failing to avoid the dangerous politics of the era. Carla has been married for a year to Sid Mandt, a miner and local union leader as the book begins. 

Sherwood, a journalist and small press publisher now living in Berlin, Germany, has long been interested in this period of West Virginia History, having co-authored the history, Just Good Politics, the Life of Raymond Chafin, Appalachian Boss. Sherwood displays virtuosic skill as he paints a rich picture of life in the southern WV coal fields in the early 1900’s. He brings to the page many of the images John Sayles fans will recognize from his 1987 independent film classic, Matewan, which covers some of the same ground, but focusses on the “Matewan Massacre,” which took place a year before the events portrayed in Sherwood’s novel.

Carla Rising explores the minds of two brothers, Todd and Gibbs Bryant, who vie for leadership of the striking miners, one advocating patience and one armed action. Having grown up roaming Blair mountain, Carla’s knowledge of the terrain is valuable to the striking miners, and she struggles to decide which of the two brothers to support.

Along with a host of authentically drawn characters, some born and raised in the mountains, others newly arrived European immigrants: Aunt Tildy and Uncle Harm, Lowcoal, Darko, the evil Baldwin guard, Gaujot, and Carla’s eleven year old brother, Nick, a mute innocent collecting trinkets to display in his secret cave, Todd, Gibbs, and Carla each find their way to important life lessons amidst their struggle to make a better life for the miners and their families in this period of exploitation and corruption in the Appalachian Mountains.

Sherwood’s Carla Rising is an important book because it brings us into the minds of people who struggle against seemingly impossible odds to take on local and state government leaders who are fully beholden to their corporate sponsors. Of course, there are no political leaders such as this in the United States today, right?

Be Part of the Solution

I recently attended the 25^th anniversary of the first environmental conference sponsored by what later became the West Virginia Environmental Council, or WVEC.

It was simultaneously inspiring and disappointing. Inspiring because I was among long-time movers and shakers in the environmental movement in WV like Norm Steenstra, Cindy Rank, Vivian Stockman, Jim Kotcon, Bill Price, and Wendy Radcliff, who  spoke about issues they were working on and passionate about. Disappointing because I was one of only about fifty people in attendance.

One reason this was my first time attending a WVEC conference is that I’ve never considered myself an “environmentalist” or an “activist” on environmental issues.  However, I went because I have come to realize that due to the scope of problems facing our state and our world, all of us must, to some degree, become environmental activists.

The precipitating event for me was the January 9, 2014 Freedom Industries chemical spill which poisoned the water supply of 300,000 people in nine counties of West Virginia including the state capital, Charleston, where I live. I call it Aquageddon. If you experienced it, you haven’t forgotten it. Even if you didn’t, you likely remember the extensive national news coverage of the chemical, “crude MCHM”, about which little was known.  After only a few days, state officials and the Center for Disease Control declared the chemical was present in small enough amounts not to be a health risk.  But even a month or more later, the affected public continued to be highly suspicious of water that had the telltale odor of licorice, which the chemical emits. Questions about what level of exposure might result in long term health risks remain unanswered, and almost a year later there are still people in the affected areas who refuse to drink the tap water.

Prior to Aquageddon, I considered myself a supporter of environmental issues. Given a choice, I always voted for candidates who were more likely to support environmental protection, and on occasion I attended fund raisers, made contributions to environmental organizations, and attended rallies.

In the wake of Aquageddon, I attended rallies and led the singing of “This Land is Your Land,” with new lyrics I’d written about the water crisis and mountain top removal (MTR) mining. I attended public meetings and went to E-Day at the legislature to lobby for the tank storage bill, a bill that passed by a unanimous vote of the WV House and Senate. UNANIMOUS! How often does that happen?

I wondered if this would be a “come to Jesus moment” heralding the beginning of a new day for recognition of environmental catastrophes that have been occurring for decades in West Virginia due to MTR and other lightly regulated industries: poisoned water supplies, flattened mountains, buried streams,  increased cancer rates and other negative health impacts on communities near mountain removal coal mines? Would the legislature take another look at the effects on our water supply and communities caused by “Fracking” in order to decide whether stricter regulations are needed? Would they begin to question the actual cost of burning carbon fuels when damage to roads, water, air, health, tourism, and communities is factored in?

Or was this the Legislature’s version of “giving the Devil his due” in which they would have to be seen doing something because so many rich and powerful people in the state were affected by Aquageddon, but could ignore the by and large rural communities affected by MTR and Fracking. Surprise, surprise, it turns out it’s the latter.

I am not a scientist, don’t like to attend meetings, and don’t want to spend my time walking the halls of the Legislature. But I want to make sure that the environmental heroes who are working to protect us continue to have the resources they need to organize meetings and rallies, to study the impacts that fracking and MTR are having, to take water, soil, and air samples.  Before WVEC was formed, activists from groups working on local issues from all around the state descended on legislators in uncoordinated and overlapping ways. WVEC was formed so the environmental community could speak with a unified voice, sharing information with legislators so they are hearing the facts about the impacts of a lack of sensible regulation on West Virginians. Without WVEC and other environmental organizations, legislators only hear what the industry lobbyists have to say about how laws and regulations might impact their bottom lines.

To help support this critical work, I started a project called AWARE: Artists Working in Alliance to Restore the Environment. AWARE’s mission is primarily to raise funds for environmental organizations in West Virginia, especially WVEC and its member groups, which include the GreenbrierRiver Watershed Association, Ohio Valley Environmental Council, Sierra Club ofWest Virginia,  WV Citizen Action Group, WV Highlands Conservancy, and the WV Rivers Coalition, I hope you will think about what you’re willing to do to help protect our environment, and if it doesn’t include activism, at least make a donation to one or more of these organizations or another like them, or to AWARE, which will distribute the money among them.

Songwriters, Bars, Drinking, and Not Smoking

I’ve never spent much time in bars.  When I reached legal drinking age I was already a self-described “country hippie” with no money, and not much of a palate for alcohol. The stringbands I performed in from 1972-83 occasionally played in bars, and by then I enjoyed a few beers in the course of an evening, but generally found the drunks who hooted and hollered and sometimes got belligerent as the evening turned to morning to be obnoxious and not the kind of people I wanted to hang out with. When I was dating between marriages, I started frequenting the Empty Glass, a Charleston live music, liberal, social watering hole, but that didn’t last long. The fact is, I don’t like drinking too much and waking up tired or feeling sick and don’t like spending twenty to fifty dollars doing it.

But, I’ve started going out to a bar on Tuesday evenings where a couple local singer/songwriters have started what they call SongwriterStage—a “songwriter in the round” format (though it’s not in the round, it’s three songwriters on stage taking turns), which is common in Nashville for showcasing the wealth of talent available there. I’m finding, as are the 10-20 who have been showing up with me on Tuesday evenings from 7pm-10pm at Timothy’s, a basement bar beneath the Quarrier Diner on, you guessed it, Quarrier St., that the Tri-State area has a wealth of singer/songwriting talent as well. Last night I enjoyed listening to TimBrowning, Mark Cline Bates, and Jeff Ellis.

Singer-songwriters are a pretty needy bunch; that is, they need to find people to listen to them. If you know any, you know that they are likely to sit you down and ask you to listen to their latest song. That’s what they need—at least one person to listen. Here in the Internet age, they might record their new song and throw it up on the web for the whole world to hear, and who knows, for awhile two or three people a day might actually click on it to listen, and if it’s good, maybe twenty, and if it’s great and they’re very lucky, maybe thousands. Maybe they’ll get so well known they can go on the road, get gigs, wake up in a different place every day and almost make enough money to live on.

Anyway, I’m not sorry I didn’t make it as a singer-songwriter back when I had several dozen songs about love and loss and made my CD called Lessons Life’s Taught Me, letting my girlfriend at the time take a picture of me with a cowboy hat on, leaning reflectively against a tree. Continuing as a teacher until I had 25 years under my belt and a pension equivalent to half my salary was a much better outcome.

Tonight, after Timothy’s wound down, I strolled over to the Boulevard Tavern where some friends who play celtic music were playing for tips. Okay, it’s not just songwriters who need to be heard, I guess. I had my third drink there and was feeling pretty good, chatting everyone up about the fundraising event July 3^rd that has been consuming my life lately.

A handsome young bearded fellow responded that he’d heard about it, and even been invited to sell his art there. As we tried to figure out why we looked a bit familiar to each other and whether in fact I had invited him to show his art, it was revealed that he’d gone to high school where my daughter had and knew Hannah. A heavy set girl in the next stool turned to look at me and said, “You were my 5^th grade teacher.”

About that time I started feeling a little old. So here I am at 4 am writing my blog, because I’m somewhat prone to insomnia anyway, and while I fall asleep easily after drinking, I don’t sleep that long.

Thankfully, I don’t smoke anymore and they don’t allow smoking in bars in Kanawha County, which makes the whole experience so much more pleasant, and means I don’t smell like an ashtray and hack and cough because drinking used to be accompanied by chain smoking.

All this to say what Larry Groce says at the end of every Mountain Stage show, “Go out and listen to some live music wherever you are.” Yes, socialize, talk (as long as you’re not near the front of the room), but also, spend some time listening carefully. You might be amazed at how talented the folks you’re listening to are, and that's what they want, for at least one person to listen--even more than money, but drop a generous gift in the tip jar, so at least they can pay their bar bill.

My 2-Day Diet Progress Week 32, June 16, 2014 

Beginning weight 11/3/13: 209 lbs.

Height 5'8" Age: 62

Goal weight: 165 lbs.

Total loss goal: 44 lbs.

Beginning waist size: 43 in.

Current waist size: 37.5 in.

Weight end of this week:  177 lbs.

Gain/Loss this week:  +2 lb.

Total Gain/Loss:  -32 lbs.